After a brief hiatus...

Hello once again!

I know it has been quite a while since I posted in my blog, but due to lots of work and projects and tests coupled with lazyness during the time left, I have failed in making post here. I apologize. Here I am today to make up for it though!

So a lot has happened wargaming-wise since I last posted. As you saw I was starting a Retribution of Scyrah army and boy have I started it. First of all here is what I bought so far:

This is a House Vyre jack kit, Full unit of Rifleman + UA, Full unit of Halbediers + UA, full unit of Mage Hunter Strike Force + UA, Ravyn, Kaelyssa and two mage hunter assassins, plus book and tokens. A good starting force.

And all of it fit into this....Somehow. I worked on them almost immediately and got them all built in a couple of days. I tried giving the House Vyre jack kit which I made into a Banshee, a good pose but I kind of suck at modeling, so I reverted back to stock posing for the most part. 

Here they all, all built and ready to be primed. 

Began priming and painting almost immediately as well. I was pumped, because one, I wanted to use them and two, I love playing with painted models. Thus I started a long conveyor belt type style of painting the numerous models I had. I stopped though, after a while and noticed I was running out of steam (really time) to paint them like this. So I opted to return to my old ways, and painted the models that usually stay on the board the longest, the warcasters and warjacks.

Here is a work in progress of both Ravyn and Kaelyssa.

Here is my finished concept of Kaelyssa.

Ravyn

Now see them slightly different. Reason was, something was bugging me of the paint schemes and I could quite place it. I finally figured it out and thought that they were to bright for me. I needed more drastic shading. Baal red just wasn't getting the job done. So i used up the last of my badab black and test drove the color scheme on the warcaster's red armor. They came out much better, not too different, but definitely darker. I also reverted base color to black as well. Now I feel that they are finished.

I then almost applied some badab black to the Banshee and added more chaos black to his armor plates so that he wasn't just a big red blob. He has more definition now as well and it contrasts well with the snow white base.

Now as for games. I have managed to use my Retribution of Scyrah force in about 5 games. Two were against mercenaries and Damiano, 1 against Circle Orboros and pKrueger, 1 against Legion of Everblight and pThagrosh and last one against Protectorate of Menoth and Reznik. I used Ravyn in all matches all at 35 pts.

My first game ever was against Gaby and his PoM. His force being slow, I was able to get into the zone quickly in the Radial Scenario: Sacrifice and start gunning his stuff down, especially his choir hiding behind his jacks. Oh, boy was that fun to do! Unfortunately, he opted for the hail mary with his Reckoner and crit Ravyn on hill without focus without the choir buff! So now she was on fire. Then boosted the damage roll and proceed to get 3 sixes almost sealing her fate. She was left at 1 box. My turn, fire did not go out and he rolled a 5 on the damage roll, doing 1 point of dmg and killing her. How sad I was!

Lesson 1: Never leave a shooting lane to your opponent, even if you are on a hill, to your warcaster, especially if you are winning. Had he not been losing he probably would have not gone for the hail mary.

Next game was against Damiano. David had just got a new shipment of Mercenaries for his birthday and he was really pumped to use them. This was also his first time playing against Retribution. Thus, when he ran Damiano to a wall in front of my mage hunter strike force with snipe, I decided to try out this Snipe->Feat-> Go concept. I activated Ravyn and popped feat and moved her to what I thought was a safe position. MHSF for the most part sat, and shot Damiano. Man...my rolls sucked. I hit under half of them on boosted rolls only needing 8s to hit. The ones I did hit, rolled pretty low on damage. I left him at 12 health I think. Well, that sucked, here I thought I had this game in bag so easily. Well I did not. I continued the game as if no feat had been popped and we kept playing. My rifleman massacred his steelhead Halbediers (he had two units) leaving 2 alive. Then my Halbediers moved up to cover the riflemen. His turn he feated and tried to kill Ravyn. His calvary is deadly under the feat with Death march and flanking but thankfully, they lack pathfinder and he failed to reach Ravyn. My turn again, I shot Damiano with Ravyn, did respectable dmg, left him at 6 and activated my riflemen. My riflemen walked one guy up and did a full unit CRA through him under the mini-feat: Whites of their eyes. This allows models in this unit to gain an additional die on attack rolls targeting models with 8" of them. Damiano was within 8" of the lead CRA guy and took the RAT 15, POW 20 to the face. With ARM 19 because of feat, he went down fast!

We played another after, and this one was much closer. It came down me either killing Damiano again or losing to scenario. I forget the scenario name, but it had the Fuel Cache objective in it. I won this game due to pEyriss' disruptor bolt and once again my Rifleman. pEyriss and her disruptor bolt is DEADLY vs warcasters. Losing not only the focus camped but almost not gain any the following turn is killer. Damiano disrupted could not upkeep his spells or even support his troops at all, so his awesome Sure-foot + Tough bubble popped. After than, my rifleman tallied up the kills and then took down Damiano with a bunch of CRAs. 

Lesson 2: This list has problems with any armor, I did not tough his jacks one bit, I did not have counter punch power to take them out as well as the infantry.

Next game was against pThagrosh. This fight was a stalemate. Officially, my opponent forfeited cause he had to go, but I played it out after he left and found out that it was really close and I wasn't sure I could seal the deal. Like I said before, my list lacks true hitting power and dealing with Legion heavies, 1 of which returns to play at full health, is killer for me. The highlight of the match was me pulling the snipe feat go trick and leaving Thagrosh at 6 health and fury cause I forced him to transfer twice. Had he been a warcaster, that was game. 

The last game I played was against Circle Orboros. My opponent was using my main army, so of course I knew its ins and outs as well as its weaknesses and strengths, especially vs Ret. My opponent was also knew in the use of said army, but he was using pKrueger, which chews through infantry like no-one's business. And I had a lot of low arm infantry, and no soulless escorts. This was not going to be easy. So basically I capitalized on what I knew he would do. He had druids popping clouds and such, so I used my sniped MHSF to murder most of them, leaving with his stealthed stones and his beasts. He feated and took most of my MHSF, but I followed up with some riflemen shots that almost killed his Warpwolf Stalker. He chewed through my riflemen with Chain lightning, but failed to kill them all. He exposed pKrueger with 2 fury to the riflemen who he missed with his boosted Chain Lightning spell. I had Ravyn pop feat and everyone unloaded on pKrueger, blowing threw his transfers with low dmg hits and then 3man CRA finished him off. The Halbediers did nothing this turn, because they were rightfully afraid of the Stalker and the banshee missed like a boss boosted shots with its cannon for 3 turns straight. 

Lesson 3: These riflemen are badass, they keep ensuring that I stay in the game, them being a long range gun platform, thanks to snipe, Ravyn protection and Ranked attacks. War-tempered is situational, but useful and Whites of their eyes is always useful, cause people always try to close the range with these guys (unless they are ravagores). 

I have been having a ton of fun with these guys, planning is key with Warmachine and much less Play it by ear like Hordes. There is nothing wrong with this, it is just a different train of thought. Retribution on the whole does not feel over powered in the least. It has its strengths, but I do not feel overpowered. Sure I ignore some rules, but what army doesn't? Also, I don't feel dirty as when I played Legion of Everblight briefly last year.

Lastly, I have not played with them recently (read: since last Sunday) because I have finally enacted a big change in our meta. We are finally going only to play 50 point games. It seems like everyone agrees that having more options and models on the table is better. I had been wishing for this since I came back from St.Louis last summer, where for the most part I played 50 point games. This last push came from trying to make lists for my Retribution. I always want to include full units, and 35 points fills up fast, even with just 1 jack. Then I can't field cool solos. This changes at 50 points, and I feel like there is a lot more room to not only add more models, but play lists that can have their own flavor and style, and not feel forced into always getting this bare minimum that runs great, but can't fit anything else that you like. 

I have been using my Gators and want to use my Circle list today or tomorrow because I almost forgot the feeling of playing at 50 pts with Circle. It feels great!

Swamp horror and Pureblood in the house tonight!

So after being out of models that I wanted to paint, last week the Swamp Horror came out for Gatormen and I decided to order him. Since I wanted free shipping from Discountgamesinc I needed to reach $50. I had been eyeing the warpwolf kit again, but this time to grab a Pureblood (the old sculpt is fine, but I wasn't too happy with my paint job and its metal!) to update my non character warpwolf trio. Thus I grabbed the kit as well. I was still short a bit, so I also picked up pEiryss, who I had been placing my cart and then removing it each time I would order something for some unknown reason. This time she stayed and I also ordered her for my brewing eKrueger theme force, Wake of Destruction.

I received them on Thursday and painted up both heavies up yesterday. Check them out.

Come at me bro!

Here he is, much whiter than before if you look further down. And much cleaner.

 Back shot. His pose actually came out kind of weird, different from what I wanted, which was the stock pose. Either way, I am happy he plastic and looks very similar to my other warpwolves now.

New and old. The old pureblood is larger/taller than the new one apparently. I was surprised by this. I never saw my old pureblood as "big." Also, white is a weird color. I will never paint anything white every again. It looks like his skin is simply primed from far away, when that was not the case. In the old pureblood, I primed him white and washed with gryphon sepia and then drybrushed white. I did not like how it came out though. For the new pureblood, I also primed white but this time watered down a mix of Space Wolves grey and skull white used that to paint all the skin parts. Then I highlighted with Skull white. He clearly is an albino warpwolf.

Next up is the Swamp horror. I like his rules, they are different and his animus seems extremely useful. He isn't fast at all, or take down heavies by himself, but he does have 4 initials, 3 of which pull shit in they hit. That's pretty cool. The animus gives reach to any friendly faction model, which I think is going to be gold with Maelok and the style that I play him which is charging stuff up front providing Malediction to his Undead Gatormen posse.

I do have one disappointment with this heavy though. You shall soon see what it is. Check him out: 

Pretty easy to paint, most of the body was washed with blue or purple. Top was painted space wolves grey and edge highlighted with skull white. Now if you look below you can see my biggest gripe with this model...

What the hell is this?!?!?! It is really, stupidly small and diminutive. I know octopods can fit themselves into boxes and stuff, but this guy just is not as initimidating due to his size. His art looked epic and he looked huge as he ate some Tharn Bloodtrackers, but the model just does not do it justice. It is not a bad model by any means. Just way too small. It should been blown up or something. Looks more like it could have been a Light warbeast and then got moved to being a heavy. Oh, well at least his rules are interesting.

Finally, up next is Eiryss, Mage Hunter of Ios. She is going to join forces with eKrueger to hunt down warcasters both in the fluff and on the table top. Terminus/ Venethrax got you down? Here, a Disruptor Bolt will fix all your problems. Lightning away Krueger! Lightning away!

Finally I would like to add some pictures of my full Gatormen Force. I am missing some models sure, but I am quite satisfied with them now that I have the Swamp horror. Maybe with more time and money, I will get the rest of the models, especially when the Gatormen Witch Doctor is finally released. But for now, it is the time of the elves...when the Post Office brings them.

Blindwater Congregation...now with varnish protecting them!

The two warlocks, Barnabus and Maelok!

Snapjaw (left) and Wrong Eye (right

My favorite Gatormen Warlock: Maelok the Dreadbound

New kid on the block! The Thrullg!

Shiny turtle and gator!

I will need to get some matte spray...when I can finally find some good one.

Until next time...Stay Classy San Di- Internet!

Where did eStryker go?????

As you may or may not have noticed, my banner has recently changed. Gone is Lord Commander Stryker from his spot on the banner. Where has he gone? Well, I will explain.

Ever since I picked up Blindwater Congregation for the Journeyman League, I have had eStryker shelved in my closet. Unfortunately, I have not had any real itching to pick up and play him and since I very impulsive, a situation arose where I could sell him and make some money to pay for my hotel at PAX East. Thus, when one of the Five Guys decided to pick up Cygnar and offered to take them off my hands, I without thought, quickly obliged.

I have no regrets. They were fun to play, especially cool to look at and paint but I felt like sticking to one lists was not the best idea after all. I wish to have an army on the Warmachine side of the game with as much depth as I have with my Circle Orboros army. With my Circle, I own almost every miniature released on the line. All that I am missing is pBaldur, Morvanna, the Shadowhorn Satyr and Sentry stone and Mannikins. That is it. I have options to run many different types of lists without feeling constrained at all. I like it. I want this for my Warmachine army.

I have been looking at Warmachine armies once again, due to my impulses taking control. I of course did not want to pick up Cygnar yet again so I looked at the others. I dislike Khador and their playstyle and model look. Cryx is not bad. I do not like Menoth enough to play the whole army as is my intended goal. While I do not jump at the chance of using Retribution of Scyrah jacks, they have grown army since I first saw them about a year ago.

   

 I like the warcasters, although they are very different that what I am used to in Circle. The two that draw me in the most are Ravyn and Vyros. I like rest too though, least most is Rhan at the moment though! Maybe that will change in future.
                                     

I especially like the infantry, especially the Mage Hunter Assassins. WOW! Two points for that??? What I would give to obtain such a model in Circle for that point cost! The reeve hunter has not performed to his potential at all to even compare and the Wayfarer is a different type.
  

 I also liked the new House Vyre jacks. They look pretty sweet. The Houseguard units also looked interesting. They reminded me of my favorite army in 40k...Eldar. Futuristic elves that dislike Humans. I can get on that wagon. As for color scheme I think I am going to go with a Saim Hann type color scheme. I have never painted red/black as the main colors and since I have those colors, I will try it out first. Worst comes to worst I will just do the studio Paint Scheme, which I find is nice just not awesome. This is of course a throw back to the Eldar army I used to play. While I was going to color my Ret the same, Iyanden yellow and blue, I only have 1 yellow color and do not wish to have to order new paints from GW and pay an extra $9 for mediocre shipping.

              

So, this is pretty obvious but I chose to get into Retribution of Scyrah! I am very excited and even pulled the trigger on grabbing some units and models. Enough to even make a 35 point army, with tokens and book AND 2 warcasters (Ravyn and Kaelyssa). All for about $200. Not too shabby. Take that you 40k players!

Soon you will be seeing them on this blog!

It was a great weekend!

I apologize for not posting sooner, but unfortunately classes have caught up with me and I have had little time to invest the hobby and this will probably continue for the next couple of weeks. At least summer is right around the corner.

First up is a correction I would like to make to a huge error on my part when talking about the PAX Steamroller 2012 event. When I saw the amount of sign ups, I was clearly mistaken in that the number shown was the number of slots REMAINING, not the amount of people signed up. Well suffice to say, after noticing this I became extremely excited for Saturday to arrive and how fun the tournament was!

My two lists were:
1. Baldur the Stonesoul
Megalith
Ghetorix
Woldwatcher
Woldstalkers
Stones and UA
Totem Hunter
Blackclad Wayfarer

Reinforcements: min Blood trackers + Nuala

2. Grayle
Feral
Stalker
Gorax
Wilder
min Wolves of Orboros + UA
Swamp Gobbers
Morriag
Gallows Grove
Stones + UA

Reinforcements: Woldstalkers + blackclad wayfarer

Here are my models from both of my lists on my Fool's Model Tray

My first match up was against Cryx. The scenario was Close Quarters or the never gonna score a control point scenario. My opponent's caster's were eSkarre and Terminus. After having heard the Muse on Mini's podcast as well as Texas Renegades podcast, I figured this guy would follow the same thought process and pick Terminus because he was playing against hordes. I knew there was no way Grayle could take down Terminus and with the amount of souls I had in that list, I was truly going to be tabled by the end of the game. Thus I chose eBaldur for many reasons. One was that I figured Baldur could handle Terminus late game (say turn 5 or 6) with his POW 19-20 hits. Secondly, in my Baldur list I had 5 souls max to give Terminus and it would take extremely bad luck on my part for him to grab them all on 1 turn. Thirdly, I saw the table, and the big wall present on my side of the board. I decided to fortress up with Baldur's rock wall spell and attrition terminus until I could apply Baldur to his face. 

Here is deployment from my perspective.

Totem Hunter preyed Corbeau. The plan was for my woldstalkers to take out some bile thralls on the flanks and the rest of my army castle up around in the area next to wall closest to me. The totem hunter was supposed to scalpel out that solo and remove the 3" additional advance and keep scalpeling his other support solo's. His list:

Terminus

Stalker

Bile thralls

Bane Thralls + UA

Tartarus

Withershadow Combine

Saxon orrik

Madelyn Corbeau

Darragh Wraithe

I would like to mention that this was my first tournament this year and also that it was my first tournament using Deathclock. I like it better than the timed turns because there is not a constant feeling of always out of time. You have the flexibility of when needing to think, or conduct a feat turn, to do so without really worrying about the clock. It also rewards efficiency, especially in the earlier and later turns (if you reach that far). The downside is of course, no tie breakers, no win my more control points or army points in the zone, just simply, either you win by scenario or assassination or you lose by running out of time. 

I bring this up because, being the tournament noob I am, I deathclocked myself the first round against Terminus. Thankfully, my opponent allowed me to try a hail mary anyways with my last 20 seconds or so but I still failed, leaving Terminus with 7 boxes left.

Below you can see the end of the game where I tried to topple Terminus with some boosted Crevasses but failed to inflict any additional damage. 

What I learned from this match:

Roll the dice faster, I was winning the attrition game thanks to my wall and the stones healing the models that were getting damaged by Bane thralls that could fit in the bottle neck I had created. Also, maybe include a Thrullg instead of the Totem Hunter. 

My next game was versus Khador in the scenario Incursion. I have to say this is one of my favorite scenarios due to the random disappearing flag that forces both players to react accordingly. I also chose eBaldur for this round although Grayle would have also done fine. The reason I chose Baldur actually was the fact that with pSorcha's feat (my opponent had one list), he could rid me of my high defense, while with Baldur I could still tank thanks to Roots of the Earth. His list was:

pSorcha

Destroyer

Juggernaut

full Man-o-war Shock Troopers

Manhunter

Yuri the axe

Gorman

Doom reavers with UA

Below you can see the end of the game. What it came down to was that his Man-o-wars were advancing up the field slowly, too slow to stop me from grabbing some points of the left most flag. Both of his solos died to my Totem Hunter and Blackclad while they sat on the leftmost flag. I controlled the middle, also thanks to Ghetorix's superior speed vs the Khador heavies. Thus I was going to win on scenario so he tried for an assassination run on Baldur top of 3rd turn. He did his thing with wind rush and charge as well as pop his feat. Unfortunately, I had Baldur cast Roots of the Earth on himself the previous turn and camp 2 fury. Sorcha tried her best, but did miniscule damage (I do not remember how much). My turn, I brought Megalith out of combat, my opponent missed his free strike on him (he had been teleported next to Ghetorix to kill Gorman), and put up Undergrowth. Then I activated Baldur, boosted first hit and put weight of stone on Sorcha. That put her at DEF 13. I was at POW 17 and did some damage. Bought another attack and boosted to finish her off. 

What I learned from this match:

Slow armies are definitely penalized in this scenario. I could have used Grayle here to mix it up.

My next round was against Legion of Everblight in the scenario: A Flag to far. He had either pVayl or Saeryn to choose from. Being Legion, I was like "Hell no! I am not picking Grayle so they can ignore my stealth" so I went with eBaldur once again. Plus He had no purification and pVayl could not move my beasts with Rampager thanks to Roots of the Earth. I was not too worried about Saeryn's feat turn because I had my wall which Eyeless sight does not ignore! My opponent ended up picking Saeryn but due to one of the Five Guys almost always playing Saeryn against me, I was pretty comfortable facing her. His list:

Saeryn

Scythean

Scythean

Angelius

Forsaken

Forsaken

Spell Martyr

Deathstalker

Deathstalker

Shredder

Shredder

Reinforcements: Raptors and Spell Martyr

I won the roll off and opted to go first. I can say that using eBaldur for this scenario, my only real option was to sit on his flags and prevent him from scoring, and hoping my reinforcement can secure me some points or I get the assassination. I unfortunately do not have any pictures of this game!

The game went according to plan. I ran first turn, and by second turn I was pretty much set up. On the far side of the table, there was a wall parallel to his board edge like 8" away from his primary flag. I decided to set up shop there and thus moved Ghetorix behind it and Rock walled up perpendicular to his incoming Scytheans. The point was for me to set up favorable trades in heavies. With the Scytheans lowish MAT of 6 and Ghetorix high DEF 14 and behind a wall he was having trouble hitting me. Further, I did not make this easy for my opponent one bit. My opponent always had to eat the reduction to hit with the wall due clever placement of my stones. My opponent tried to buy himself the game winning alpha strike by popping feat after having his heavies move into charge range of mine but I simply just moved mine back farther away, out of his threat range. 

By the end of the game he was down to just his Angelius, Saeryn, a shredder and his raptors. I had lost only my blood trackers and woldstalkers. No points had been scored. The game ended with me deathclocking my self. I underestimated how long it would take me to kill his whole army and thus did not pay attention to the clock. His time was actually almost up too, with just under 20 seconds left. My last turn I should have simply activated Baldur and feated and waited for him to use his turn up. Otherwise, it was a good game, and one I was happy that I was able to control through use of Rock Wall. My opponent had to leave to attend a panel, so he gave me the win. He was a good guy!

What I learned from this match:

Roll faster once again! And when your time is just about up, just move everything fast and hope for your opponent to clock himself! Losing to deathclock while clearly winning kind of sucks! Also, since this was a reinforcements scenario, I must change how I used them. I used them to distract Saeryn and his Angelius, but I should have waited to use them later to win some easy control points. Wolf riders and a feralgheist might be a better addition.

My next round was against Cryx in the scenario: Sacrifice. His two lists were eDenny and eSkarre. Something I noted was that his eSkarre list did not have any way to deal with high armor (no bane thralls etc) and his other list had Bane thralls (no reach). So I chose eBaldur once again (yay). Rock wall kills the coverage of non reach models on my models behind it. Especially slow ones. He chose eDenny. His list:

eDeneghra

Seether

Deathripper

Bane thralls + UA

Tartarus

Withershadow Combine

Blackbane's Raiders

Skarlock

I won the roll off and decided to once again go first. I set up my Baldur and my Battlegroup in direction of the control zone along with my shifting stones. I set up the Totem Hunter, woldstalkers and Blackclad wayfarer towards the flag. My prey was his caster (did not know what else to prey). As can be surmised, his pirates were going to have a tough time versus me, due to the only non magic weapons in my list were Ghetorix and the Totem hunter. I figured he would send those to the flag up top and not risk his Bane thralls to not contest the zone. 

This is exactly what happened. My first turn, I ran my battlegroup laterally towards the zone and my woldstalkers, etc towards the flag. He did the same. I figured that he was going to screwed by a forest he had to cross on his side to get to the control zone, but he used the Skarlock to cast Ghostly on his Bane thralls, and this worked really well. None the less, I arrived at the zone first and proceed to set up shop.

This picture depicts the end my turn. As expected my woldstalkers had a field day killing the Raiders with their ranged MAGIC weapons at RAT 8 thanks to zephyr. Unfortunately for him, there was a wall in between his unit and mine, but it was positioned perpindicular to my gunline and thus did not help one bit. 

His turn, he ran his Raiders away from the flag and towards the back of this army. Deneghra went incorporeal and walked forward and popped feat and then camped 7 focus. She caught everything in it except for Baldur. He than ran the rest of his army towards my army to get ready to charge me on his next turn. He was aware of my stones being able to shift models, even on his feat turn, but this only factored in on how close he moved Deneghra. Consequently, she was outside range of me to port Megalith, but his Seether was not. I proceeded to port Megalith next to his Seether and the front of his Bane Thrall unit. 

Before that, he had finished his turn, he had made a large mistake in trying to charge Megalith with Tartarus. When he made this decision, he had factored in the extra range given by the Curse but not fact that it has to be done first, before charging, and that this target needs to be in Curse range first, before you can benefit from the bonus. Thus, he failed his charge and right in my face, outside of melee range. He also forgot that my woldwatcher had a gun. My woldwatcher aims, boosts and hits Tartaturs. He of course also boosts the damage and manages to kill Tartarus, making him a forest. Baldur then activates and charges the Seether to put some damage on him and casts undergrowth. Since my other model's cannot move anyways I pop my feat and end his activation camping 2 fury after putting a wall diagonally along Ghetorix and Megalith. I finish my turn by activating Megalith and trashing the damaged Seether as well as killing a bane thrall. 

My opponent sees a change to assassinate Baldur, who is in his face. He decides to try something that would have killed any of my other warlocks. He activates Denny first and charges Baldur. He boost to hit, hits and does 1 dmg to Baldur. He activates Dark Banishment. Unfortunately for him, Baldur and everyone in his control area has Roots of the Earth. This cancels any movement or placing on those models. This made him immune to Dark Banishment's placement effect. This put Denny in Baldur's kill range. My opponent had made a fatal mistake, but decided to keep on going by casting Curse of Shadows on Megalith and Ghostly on the Bane thralls. He activates them next and charges a bunch on Baldur. Only like 3 can get into melee range. The rest charge Megalith and Ghetorix. He begins with the attacks on Baldur. He misses 2 and the last one damage that is transfered to Ghetorix. Thats pretty much game over for him. The rest miss ghetorix and almost take Megalith (the killing blow missed him), leaving him with like 5 health. Turns out bane thralls suck at connecting their attacks when Tartarus isn't around cursing stuff!

My turn was as expected. I clear LOS to Denny, Megalith pops undergrowth and Baldur boosts his first hit on Denny. He hits dropping her to DEF 11 and swings at dice +4. Another swing and she crumples. 

It was a good game. In this picture you can see the final round. People really underestimate the non knockdown and non placement effect of Roots of the Earth.

What I learned from this match:

I need to figure out what to do with Totem Hunter, he did almost nothing this game. I also need to find a more reliable way to remove models such as the Skarlock, so that Undergrowth is more effective. 

This tournament was great fun. Although I did not place (I think I got 4th out of 16), it was a great experience and added more fire to my passion. I cannot wait to participate in more!

Tournament learnings:

I am most comfortable with eBaldur and will stick with him for tournaments, albeit with changes to the list such reinforcement changes and removing the totem hunter. What I do need to 1. A list to complement this one. If I had faced an opponent with purification or spell ignoring effects or both, I would have been in real trouble. And 2. I need more practice with deathclock. Deathclocking yourself, especially when you are clearly tabling your opponent is almost as bad as killboxing yourself. I need to think faster, move more efficiently, and roll faster. 

Later, I will put up some battle reports of two very satisfying games I had yesterday against some of the Five Guys group. Thanks for reading!

Some Meta woes...but PAX East tomorrow!

I have not checked in a while, and the reason has been lack of time. My mother went through a recent operation of the mandible and I was helping in her recovery. Thankfully, she is recovering, although her lower jaw area is very swollen.

Another reason is, due to it being spring break week here in Puerto Rico, and the fact that is lines up with holy week, I have been spending time with the family, namely both my parents. Last weekend I was with my mother and this week I have been with my father, visiting. Thus, I have had less time to play. I did manage to get a very large game in with a couple buddies of mine.

Before I get into that game, I would like to say that recently I have felt the excitement of warmachine and hordes in my area has been flagging. I for one have been unaffected by it, I love all aspects of the hobby, but my number of consistent opponents has dropped. The consequence of this has of course been less meaningful games played. This has me a little sad and kind of frustrated but at the same time not that surprised. When I get into something, and really like it, I tend to get pretty passionate about it. This is not to say that I am a dick in any way, but my attitude towards people tends to change subtlety. I am not a passive aggresive guy either, it is just I learn to expect less from people. When I mean passionate, I am refering to wanting to play a bunch of quick games, no matter the outcome and have them also be engaging where you do not have to feel bad because your dice rolled well at a critical moment or your opponent did not know your army well enough to see a specific tactic coming.

When I think of the past 5 games I have played, I think only 2 have been satisfying. By satisfying, I mean when you are done with a game, weather you win or lose, you feel that it was a good game, well played from both sides. One of these games was when David shot Molik Karn towards Barnabus from an oblique angle and basically pushed the game in his favor decisively. Extremely well played and made me think hard as to what I could have done after I was on the ropes. The other game was a win vs eMakaeda where my opponent failed to go all in. It was satisfying in that how I prepared for the bullet and even if he had gone all in, had a reasonable chance to survive and counter punch. It did not hurt that I ate Molik Karn and drank his 5 fury!

So, after the string of unsatisfaying games, I have been dying for a tournament style day where you are fit a ton of fast paced games in the time it takes to play one casual game. I was hoping for this in this event I am going this weekend called Penny Arcade Expo or PAX. This event/convention is held in Boston and is for everything gaming. From console's to tabletop to RPGs and card games. It is actually the catalyst behind my group picking up warmachine/hordes and for me playing it as well. One of the events at the convention is a simple 35 point Steamroller. I have of coursed signed up, but unfortunately, after having checked the thread, there are only 3 people signed up for it. Originally, when I signed up there was like 13 or 14 and I was like nice! I know this is not going to be like Gencon or anything but I was happy with having 10+ people new to play with. As it stands, I am not 100% sure it is still going to be held or if I should even lug my models over there. None of the other Five Guys group is going to bring their stuff (as I said about the dwindled interest in the system) which could have swelled the numbers of this tournament and gave them a really nice experience into the hobby. They have really only seen what Puerto Rico has to offer. PR is small, with only 15 people max who play warmachine/hordes on the whole island (that I know off). They have not been to St. Louis where there are multiple stores holding events almost on a weekly bases. They have not been to Diecon or Gencon where the amount of players to go to each tournament is massive! It would be different if we lived near such a place. If only...

Well, I have decided to bring my models anyways and try my luck to see even if I don't win the tournament, play some interesting and fun lists like this casting galore list:

Mohsar the Desertwalker5

Gorax4

Feral Warpwolf9

Megalith11

Druids of Orboros (Leader and 5 Grunts)7

Druid of Orboros Overseer2

Blackclad Wayfarer2

Gallows Grove1

Gallows Grove1

Gallows Grove1

Gallows Grove

Also, if I can get some games in the free play area, that would be awesome as well! My hope has not still
been dashed!

I will be honest though. I am extremely pumped to go to my internship this summer. I will be going to Lima, OH where as far as I know there is no warmachine players, but there is a light. This light is that in an hour to  hour and half drive away in any direction, there are multiple communities of warmachine players, all probably holding tournaments and events and maybe even the rare con. Places such as the famed detroit meta, Toledo, Fort wayne, Dayton and Columbus at 2 hours or less drive away. While it may be tough to make it to the far away places during the weekdays, for a Saturday or Sunday where I can fit in a couple of games, or even a tournament, it is very much so worth it. Plus, all the different play styles I can see and come up against will be extremely welcome when compared to slight stagnation here in PR.

I am also putting into the works, going to Gencon for all the days this year. While it is an inconvenient time (during first week of class), I will see what I can do to go, considering Indianapolis is only 2 hours and a half away from Lima.